A city team of emergency medical technicians and homeless outreach workers returned to Wahiawa and the North Shore last week, encountered a dozen homeless people and promised to keep coming back to provide first aid, wound care, social services, shelter beds and, ultimately, stable if not permanent housing.

The 10 EMTs and community health workers from CORE — or the Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement Program run by the city’s Emergency Services Department — arrived at Haleiwa Small Boat Harbor in refurbished ambulances and a repurposed city bus, wearing matching red CORE T-shirts and bringing along plenty of cold bottled water to break the ice with the homeless people they met.

John Kanaulu, CORE’s field operation supervisor, estimated that the North Shore alone, not including Wahiawa, is home to 600 to 700 homeless people, many of whom grew up on the North Shore only to end up homeless for years, often decades.

CORE teams began their outreach in December 2021 by initially working with homeless people in downtown, Chinatown and Waikiki before expanding less frequently to the Windward side, Central Oahu and the West and North shores.

About half of the people they have met across Oahu reported that they are “chronically homeless,” meaning they’ve been living on the streets a long time or repeatedly, often with common themes of mental illness and substance abuse.

In the summer the teams began more regular visits to the North Shore in order to build stronger relationships with the homeless people they encounter, with the goal of earning their trust and getting them off the street.

They hope to return weekly.

The CORE teams have found a much different, wary population on Oahu’s West and North shores compared with the people they encounter in urban Honolulu.

In general, CORE workers said, homeless people in town are much more willing to accept services and shelter and to talk about their medical histories and personal information compared with the people they’ve met on the North Shore, where there are no homeless shelters, less support, and the homeless are much more guarded about their personal information.

Homeless people in Wahiawa, the North Shore and Leeward Oahu are used to living on their own in vehicles or in public spaces, often for years, CORE workers told the Honolulu Star-­Advertiser during their trip to the North Shore and Wahiawa last week.

None of the homeless people whom the CORE team met accepted CORE’s invitation to climb aboard their bus to be relocated to a shelter in town or a so-called medical respite for those with serious medical needs.

On Oahu a homeless person has an average life span of only 53 years.

Like people living in other homeless communities across Oahu, no one wanted to leave the place where they have lived for years, if not their entire lives, even if it means getting off the street, where they can work with social workers on plans to rebuild their lives.

Few would reveal much of their personal information to the CORE team, including their last names and ages.

One woman named Lana, who owns a small, friendly off-white dog, accepted bottled water and EMT care to treat and bandage both her arms after a different dog attacked her.

She also welcomed CORE’s offer to help get her expired driver’s license renewed.

But Lana told CORE workers that she would not relocate to a shelter because none of them will let her bring her dog, which is not true.

She also declined to provide her last name to CORE or the Star-Advertiser.

None of the CORE workers argued with Lana about her misperception of pets being welcomed into some of Oahu’s homeless shelters — albeit located more than an hour away from the North Shore.

But none of the CORE EMTs or community health workers were discouraged, either, when others they met like Lana declined their offers of shelter, medical respite housing or, even, the possibility of long-term housing.

Several CORE staff told the Star-Advertiser during their latest North Shore visit that trust — and progress — requires patience and more frequent return visits to help fill needs beyond wound care and water, such as getting homeless people access to government financial assistance they’re eligible for and government IDs that are necessary for jobs and housing.

“In town everybody needs everything,” said EMT Carlo Menezes. “On the North Shore they don’t ask for much help. It’s a trust issue. They don’t know us. They don’t know what we’re going to do to help them.”

A group of six returning tourists from Dallas and Nashville, Tenn., saw the CORE team working with Lana and other homeless people on a patch of grass behind Haleiwa Joe’s restaurant at the Haleiwa Small Boat Harbor and applauded the city’s multipronged outreach toward homelessness.

They had just finished a noncertified scuba dive with North Shore sharks on their latest visit to Oahu, where they’re staying in Waikiki and have grown accustomed to seeing homeless encampments all the way from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to Waikiki and out to the North Shore.

“We have a lot in Texas,” said Randall Jerry, 25. “They all need help.”

Menezes and other CORE workers then responded to a call that a woman who appeared to be in at least her 70s had fallen while living next door to the harbor at Haleiwa Ali‘i Beach Park.

When they arrived, a senior with long gray hair who would only give her first name, Carole, was sitting in a new wheelchair at a picnic table on the grass.

Carole said she had been evicted earlier in the week, fell after relocating to Ali‘i Beach Park and injured her left leg. Someone then bought her the wheelchair she was using, she said.

She let EMTs examine her leg and welcomed the offer from female CORE members to wheel her to the park’s bathroom to relieve herself and help her shower, where they also could further assess other possible injuries.

Afterward they provided Carole with fresh clothes. But she declined to provide any additional information, including her age, and said she will not leave the North Shore and preferred to remain homeless at Ali‘i Beach Park, where several other people appeared to be living in their vehicles.

The only downside, Carole told the CORE crew, was that her spot at the picnic table gets doused by the park’s sprinklers every night.

A different contingent of CORE members later met a handful of homeless people living in their cars at nearby Kaiaka Bay Beach Park, including Willie Ramirez, 54, who grew up on the North Shore and now lives in a Toyota faded by age and the sun.

“Uncle Willie,” as the CORE members began referring to him, told them that he was diabetic, so an EMT pricked his finger and told Ramirez that his blood sugar was low.

They gave Ramirez a liquid dose of dextrose that quickly perked him up.

After he was examined and offered a bed in a shelter, Ramirez said, “Maybe, if it’s around here.”

Asked how long he’s been homeless, Ramirez told the Star-Advertiser, “Long time already.”

Community Service Specialist Elijah Galuan was encouraged that Ramirez did not instantly rule out the possibility of moving out of his Toyota and into a shelter.

Like his CORE teammate Menezes, Galuan said the key will be earning the trust of the homeless people living on the North Shore.

“We just need to build more rapport,” Galuan said. “That’s the good thing about CORE. We keep coming back.”

EMS Director James Ireland said Mayor Rick Blangiardi continues to search for a site on the North Shore to team up with the state and nonprofit groups to create another tiny-­home kauhale community where homeless people can live and receive social service help with other North Shore homeless.

In general, unlike some other homeless encampments in other parts of Oahu, on the North Shore “often people have lived in Hawaii their whole life and have deep connections to friends and family, but they’re estranged maybe because of mental health and addiction. So they depend on each other for emotional support. And they’re extremely resistant to being transferred to any assistance, mostly located in Iwilei. So we have to find solutions to the folks that are homeless on the North Shore.”

CORE workers continue to build a database of all the homeless people they meet across Oahu, including on the North Shore, in order to know more “about what their issues are and what treatment needs they have,” Ireland said.

Getting them off the street and the help they need benefits everyone, he said.

“No. 1, people are suffering, and there are public sanitation, public safety issues,” Ireland said. “And at the end of the day, people have the right to be safe in their neighborhoods, in their parks and on their beaches.”